Vietnam's smartphone shipments declined by 15.6% in 2022 to 13.4 million units, according to International Data Corporation's (IDC’s) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.
These volumes were just slightly better than the 13.2 million units in 2015, when the market was still on the rise. In the fourth quarter of 2022, significantly dampened consumer demand, high inflation, and economic uncertainties pushed the market down 50.3% year over year to 2.6 million units, a total not seen since the third quarter of 2021, when the market was struggling with supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is despite the fourth quarter of the year usually being a seasonally strong period.
"The rising living cost and growing macro-economic concerns resulted in a significantly low consumer demand, dampening any rebound in 2022 when Vietnam re-opened," said Thanh Vo, research analyst for client devices at IDC Vietnam. "This has led to a cautious start in 2023 as vendors rethought their portfolio of devices amidst profitability concerns."
Apple was a bright spot in 2022, being the only top smartphone vendor to weather the decline with positive growth due to the high demand for the iPhone 14 series despite the production issues in China affecting the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max supplies.